well back to the big picture i'm so far been coming up in this half hour just one day after the shutdown of rupert murdoch's news of the world newspaper allegations of surfaced of more information at the victim this time former prime and british british prime minister gordon brown details of what he says were leaked to the public coming out plus america is not quite making the grade when it comes to education talk to the filmmaker behind the finland phenomenon which highlights the world's best education system.

more bad news for infotainment media empire report out of the u.k. says that murdoch's now shattered stabbed lloyd news of the world attempted to pay off a new york police officer for access to the phone records of a nine eleven victim the offer was rejected by the police officer and problems grew by leaps and bounds today when the guardian reported that former british prime minister gordon brown was also a victim of hacking by other british newspapers owned by murdoch's news corp private investigators working for murdoch's papers including the formerly reputable sunday times allegedly monitored brown's phone and family medical records for more than ten years while he served as prime minister and chancellor of the structure of the exchequer all of these developments seem to have railed the media mogul's bid to buy british broadcaster b. sky b. it's british politicians who. to block the acquisition b. sky b.

is a very profitable a.t.t. satellite the u.k. and jim that murdoch has had it is for quite some time meanwhile here in the u.s. murdoch's news corp face a one hundred million dollar bill from the u.s. department of justice may soon be launching an investigation into news corp for violating the foreign corrupt practices act after it was learned that news of the world recently paid off corrupted british police officers so could this be the beginning of the end for murdoch's reign as the world's richest media mogul and should american regulators be taking a closer look at news corp operations here in the united states joining us now to offer his take is stephen webster senior editor at ross story stephen welcome it's based on this is no small issue i mean there's evidence that the sunday times owned by murdoch hacked bank brown's bank records is in france son's medical records and publish a story on the child serious illness or do you think this is going to end up in the u.k. . in the you're hearing i agree this will likely be reduced their attempt to start

a process that a number of our distance are not right i'm not against it it needs to be referred to us. you know so impacts on the. we want to do our community our will to include. the. i think maybe even a larger question here is given that rupert murdoch owns a substantial media empire here in the united states particularly the wall street journal which is kind of his crown jewel here like the sunday times is in the u.k. and the wall street journal i believe correct me if i'm wrong is the dow jones company that owns it that murdoch owns now is run by a guy who used to work for murdoch in the u.k. apparently this has been going on for some time. is the c.e.o. first of all from from the wall street journal from his u.k. empire and secondly is there any possibility that the wall street journal or for

that matter fox news could be involved in any of this stuff and might end up somehow damaged by it. well i i can't i don't want to see that oh i haven't seen any evidence os news wall street journal or our newspapers and his other papers were just so really all business right now it's limited to the news international and news corp the british series was run by seems more awkward sort of you know are i could see this basically in the history but. it's too. near the u.s. operations certainly it will if the u.s. department of justice and serious exchange commission in so once again investigation this would be her own company right now true if that were to happen yeah this really could save us media empires very poor do you think it's possible that it could take the entire empire down or would it just you know cost him some

profits. it would probably cost them profits it would probably cost them a lot of the ones i mean you've got to think. of a. program running for the presidency next year if the ox news or any of us us properly for all this how closely do you want your credibility on an organization right what is there doing that saying. yeah you know on the sunday shows here in the united states i forget which one it was but one of the comments that was made about this was how tony blair had flown to australia to to you know bend his knee in front of murdoch to get his endorsement when he was going to run for prime minister of gordon brown did how david cameron the current prime minister did all three of these guys you know went to the guy who won the newspapers in the u.k. and said please make us president and the person on one of the sunday shows here in

the us that i watched on the big network shows you know fortunately we have nothing like that here in the united states and i'm thinking wait a minute. how do you get to the republican presidential nomination without going through fox news and don't really have basically the exact same thing going on here in the united states at least with regard to the republican party where if you want to be a nominee if you want to be taken seriously you have to have the blessing of roger ailes and rupert murdoch has absolute correct that's absolutely correct he built that system out if you u.k. that was our go he was long sought for many years and have a similar influence on america. our influence which has one. is it seems like that is fundamentally an authentic hole to to democracy i mean this is this this goes even beyond the old yellow journalism of william randolph hearst and his is saying to back in what was in one thousand nine

hundred eighty seven i think it was to two was the mckinley president mckinley you know give me a said you want a war you want the spanish-american war we'll get pictures and he said i think it's part frederick remington wasn't that he as he said give me the pictures and we'll have the wars it was that i mean this i thought that i think most americans think that it had been it's been a hundred years since newspapers had that kind of influence no no well now it's television and it's hard isn't it still to this point even though the internet has taken away so much of the power of all media it's the conquest is not complete olney it's the right of a stronger more. street structure and that's one of the reasons why arts can seem to be so rude concepts of the mean streets nationally clearly on this reality show it's like you're on what they said the moments may be close primaries into it for production of products yours they want to make it right american idol. this

is a merger that we've seen taking place between the murdoch evil empire in the republican army or the u.s. now if the same level corruption exists here as it does you know and be part of justice in that investigation they've got serious problems yeah but even i mean even if it's not corruption just the influence peddling which mean it may not be illegal just seems to be mind boggling can we finally now petition to remove the tag fair and balanced probably not know if they have to call themselves whatever then wants ok stephen thanks a lot for being with us tonight. it's my pleasure thank you. so much for fair and balanced maybe should be fair and slightly on balance on news corp's own shareholders are now turning on their corporation with stocks slipping in the wake of a phone i act in scandal a group of news corp shareholders filed suit in a delaware court accusing murdoch of rose mismanagement in arguing that murdoch

habitually uses news corp to enrich himself and his family members at the company's and its public shareholders expense and of what it forgot to include at the expense of the credibility of our nation's news. it's the good the bad of the very very randomly ugly the good pac-man no not the hungry little yellow munchers that feast on pellets while trying to avoid goes the arcade world but the people against the corporate manipulation of elections and news ackman a new political action committee formed to combat the corporate takeover of our government as the packman website states and elections are decided by billionaires and corporations it is an injustice to the will of the people sometimes you have to beat the bad guys at their own game so don't even pacman and let's give karl rove

super pacs a run for their money issues like. the back of him paul once he appearing on meet the press yesterday to let me use his experience as governor of minnesota to explain why he'd make a good president but i've got the record of toughness better than anybody else in this race my goodness i was the first governor in minnesota's history to shut down the government i set a record for vetoes i took more. since when is shutting down the government and furloughing tens of thousands of government workers and suspending crucial government services a good thing especially when you're running to be head of the us government is like buying to the c.e.o. at a company and how do your previous record of running competence into the ground. and the very very ugly ron paul libertarian congressman from texas is pushing a bill that privatized airport security and is making the absurd claim that nine eleven happened because our government bans handguns on airplanes in an interview

on where else but news paul blamed the nine eleven tragedy of federal aviation policy before the attacks but the governor who was in charge of security before nine eleven they did a lousy job they prohibited guns from being on the airplane in. he said nobody should resist so we set the stage for nine eleven yet another republican argument the more guns prevents violence will someone please explain then why the us the nation with the most guns also has the most gun violence maybe if we had bazookas on planes then we got to stop nine eleven and that's very very. coming up is a lack of confidence really causing our economy to nosedive g.o.p. is working to sell that exact why internet still is. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to

break through. who can you trust no one who is you know view with the global machinery to see where are we heading state controlled capitalism is called satchels when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question morning.

what do you study by the american journal of public health takes a look at how certain social factors contribute to early deaths looking at just the year two thousand the study found that two hundred forty five thousand americans died from causes directly related to poor education in comparison according to f.b.i. crime data just over fifteen thousand americans were murdered in the year two thousand and he's nearly fifteen times as many americans died because they failed to achieve adequate levels of education they were killed in acts of homicide and out of the thirty four o.e.c.d. nations the most developed nations in the world american high school students currently ranked fourteenth for reading skills seventeenth for science and twenty fifth out of thirty four for math skills it republicans don't hesitate to gut public education with spending cuts and waging war on teachers' unions nationwide. if finland education system has consistently ranked number one in the world take a look.

so what are the finns doing right and what can we learn from training now to answer these questions is documentary filmmaker bob compton the new film the finland phenomenon offers a fascinating look at the world's best education system bob welcome thank you good to be here great to have you with us first of all fill in america have some similarities in as much as fifteen percent of their kids are are speak a second language you know the same thing in the united states roughly it's this thing from actually to look it is not so much to compare finland to all of america because we don't have a federal education system we have fifty state system so and so the best way to look at it is to hear finland to the states and finland is the same size or larger and thirty three year. it states and when you start to break down those states minnesota for example they are almost identical demographically economically and yet in the ranks here in minnesota ranks here in the international exams so we

have put all this emphasis and by the way i want to first just shout out to my old friend david sirota who told me a column about what you were doing and sent a copy of it to me and i was like whoa this is incredible we've got to get this going on. the we have just gone whole hog on testing this whole no child left behind thing that caused he was my senator at the time jim jeffords to leave the republican party he was so horrified by it. and we've had that name for quite some time the finns don't do that they don't they actually do almost no testing. their school days are shorter their school years about the same length so they have long summer breaks the. classes that were no longer students and more time on task and they learn at their own pace. and what's interesting in finland so the only high stakes exam is that matriculation exams in the high school but if you

look at china korea india other places where they were searching made films about the education the rest of the world within the leading the way but the rest of world is moving away from high stakes testing so they're all going away at the time we're going this way doing more and more and more testing and getting worse and worse results and getting worse and worse and yet we continue doing more and more of it you the teachers in finland are treated very differently than teachers here in the united states i mean scott walker in wisconsin for example made it a major battle to be able to strip teachers of union rights right what's the deal and then well in finland first of all the culture itself is quite different than the american culture they they value and recognize and revere educational attainment and they hold teachers apparently high regard so it's a highly respected profession over there and it's highly respected because the educational requirements of teachers and putting one is quite different in the states here in the u.s. to teach in middle school high school you need a bachelor's and

a master's degree in the subject and teach plus one year pedagogical training which looks more like a medical residency where you follow a master teacher in their classroom for six to nine months learning from someone who is a great teacher and then they make a surprising next step of putting the teacher into a good school in america we have students coming right out of colleges of education and we put them in the worst schools and really set them up for failure which is why we have fifty percent of our teachers new teachers quit after. five years so we have a tremendous answer and i saw sims statistics for example forty eight percent of american math teachers have no no background in math right going to a third of the teachers the teachers in america have attained the level of education required by the states so the bar was set here and the teachers achieve that what america needs to do if we're to match anyone in china and korea in india and singapore is we need to raise the requirements so if we're going to set the bar higher you have a higher as well that in america. you definitely have to has that if. you

want to attract the highly talented highly motivated students that you want is a. interesting that thirty forty years ago most americans there was a study done by national school asked if magazine every year they'd ask kids who you want to be when you grow up it always for a long time was a president they wanted to be like eisenhower the lot of you like kennedy now they want to be a billionaire now they want to be like bill gates were celebrities yeah or a celebrity and how does that speak to our schools well i think the the issue in america is we are a culture entertainment sports and leisure time that's just a fact that's who we are we spend it probably the most egregious example of this tom is in alan texas for a high school thirty two hundred students who are building a sixty million dollars football stadium that's a very clear message to kids interest you know what what is the community priority

it's it's sports how easy is to million dollar science and right you wouldn't see that in finland i mean finland they put their money and you know lab equipment great vocational training and good same is true in china and korea so we are our culture doesn't allocate its attention and resources the same way the top performing countries do for america thanks for the great research you're doing on this and the great documentary to thank you very much appreciate you coming by but it's not too late for american students to get back in the game and be able to compete in the international arena with their peers in finland india and china but that will mean the conservative lawmakers who are trying to slash funding education programs and cutting teacher salaries in half will have to put the best interest of american students and doesn't affect the future of the united states as a world leader ahead of the interests of the billionaires who are currently calling the shots here in washington.

they're republicans are selling lives it shouldn't be surprising that the press is crying them they usually do but should be more surprising is that the president of the united states is repeating it first is that the c.e.o.'s of the biggest and most profitable country companies in this country who are sitting in over two trillion dollars in cash are refusing to spend it to hire workers are doing so because they're lacking in confidence. they keep on going out there and saying you know mr president what are you doing about jobs and when you ask them well what would you do we've got to get. government spending under control and we've got to get our deficits under control. so i say ok let's go. where are they i mean this is the this is this is what they claim would be the single biggest

boost to business certainty and confidence. so what's the hold up. you know this whole idea that business leaders are not investing in higher end jobs because they're lacking confidence is any attic any business that has customers will hire people to make the products that customers want to buy for the seven thousand years of western civilization this is been true if there are buyers somebody will step up to sell you all of the proof is in the illegal markets of drugs and prostitution but it's same in legal markets so long as there are buyers companies will hire workers to get the product to market. so if that confidence is lacking in this economy it's customers people aren't buying because they've been robbed blind by the banks two years and they're underwater on their mortgages there's strung out on credit card debt and most importantly between twenty and thirty million of us don't have a job or have a job that pays so poorly that they're broke. back in nineteen thirty two two years

into the great depression republican president herbert hoover tried to sell americans the same bill of goods as today's republicans when he was running for reelection against f.d.r. here's how he described the importance of confidence i am confident that if the congress could find these suggestions which come from members of both parties a round for adjustment of legislation on the dominant particulars and could bring it into immediate action it would you know not only relieve dollar distress people of agree establish that competence which we saw. it when f.d.r. was inaugurated he addressed herbert hoover's confidence fairy as paul krugman calls them saying flat out that the problem wasn't rich people's confidence but working people needed a good job and some help with their mortgage. this is not.

an actual amount. to. reduce crime rates. but it is no understandable problem if we face it in courageously they can be accomplished in. recruiting by the government itself creating the family with great feeling good concealable will but at the same time proving. that competition great greatly needed to stimulate and reorganize they use a lot of great men through resources it can be by preventing realistically. book. that was by the way his first day

in office this morning at his press conference president obama also referenced the second big republican why they were broke if there's not enough money in america to put people back to work. i've been hearing from my republican friends for quite some time that it is a moral imperative for us to tackle our debt and our deficits in a serious way i've been hearing from them that this is one thing that's creating uncertainty and holding back investment on the part of the business community. it's frankly so sad to see a democratic president repeating republican frames that are just lives during the great depression who are and the other republicans tried to say the same thing the government couldn't help us out of it oppression because the country didn't have the cash when f.d.r. was inaugurated he called them out on it. barely general use of it language is in the very sight of the.

president making the really of the. man fine but i'm. pretty. confident. that advocated. for being a money thing going to. get him out of public opinion. about a front. man f.d.r. then went on to point out who was to blame really to blame for the great depression . but money paying one. hundred feet in the middle of a. company. meanwhile today the having a post is reporting that the obama administration is about to cut a deal with wall street banks toure's where they pay thirty billion in fines nobody

goes to jail nobody mentioned that today's press conference but here's f.d.r.'s final recommendation from the day he took office as president in one nine hundred thirty three. and finally in our progress the resumption of what. we require to say. they would make even the bill. them up be a quick. banking and credit and then punishment. a similar amount of money so mr president president obama please look at american history the good cop bad cop routine the danger in cancer a plane on you is as old as time and you should stop buying it there is no republican santa claus just like there's no confidence fairy and the american

people will only rally behind you if you ask them to it work for f.d.r. and it can work for you too if you'll try it. as the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we covered visit our website thom hartmann dot com free speech dot org an archie dot com also check out our two youtube channel for a link to tom hartman dot com the stars show is also available for free video by our guest on i tunes and we have a free tom hartman i phone and i've added apple at the app store it's honest feedback on to twitter at tom underscore hartman on facebook at tom underscore hardman on our blogs message boards and telephone comment line at thom hartmann dot and don't forget in our pursuit begins with you when you show up and participate tag your it see them.